Acadiana

L'Acadia est la région de Lafayette a l'ouest de la Nouvelle Orléans, passé Bâton Rouge sur l'interstate 10. Nous étions à Henderson entre le bayou Teche et le Bassin Atchafalaya. Les locaux ont des noms français et parle ou baragouinent leur version de la langue, leur hospitalité est sans reproche, des gens simple et vrais.

Il y a des incontournables à faire ou à visiter en voici quelques exemples; Il faut absolument aller déjeuner le samedi matin au café des amis a Breaux Bridge, soyez certain d'être dans la file d'attente au plus tard à 7h00 pour avoir une place assise à l'ouverture vers 7h45, sinon vous devrez attendre au bar votre tour pour manger en prenant une bière et regardant le monde danser au son de l'orchestre Zydeco.

Aussi il y a le lac Martin qui est très connu des photographes, il y a une trail avec un boardwalk mais il était fermé pour rénovations, la meilleure façon de le voir est en bateau plat avec un opérateur local. Il y a un seul opérateur qui a des installations sur place au lac, mais comme il a fait toute sorte de magouilles selon les locaux Champagne est le gars le plus hait du parrish et de l’encourager n’aide pas la communauté dans notre cas on est allé avec http://www.cajuncountryswamptours.com/ et c’était excellent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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En passant sur l’interstate 10 entre Grosse Tête et Henderson un long pont de 18 miles de long ce qui le place 14ème au monde traverse le Bassin Atchafalaya un gros marécage 32 km de large par 240 km de long. Avec de gros Cyprès chauve un peu partout il fut un temps où il en était remplis mais comme le bois de ces arbres est entre autre résistant aux thermites et à la pourriture il fut coupé à outrance au 19ème siècle. Il est possible de visiter soit en Air boat ou Bateau Plat.

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Il y a trois iles de sel dans la région et deux d’entre eux peuvent être visité. La plus connue des deux est Avery Island ou est l’usine de Tabasco et le très photographié Jungle Garden. L’autre Jefferson Island avec une grosse maison d’époque et un magnifique jardin.

Dans la ville de Lafayette il y a aussi Vermillon ville un village d’antan reconstitué a visité.

La Louisiane (Nouvelle Orleans)

Notre destination première était South Padre Island à la fin du Texas sur la côte du golfe. L’épave sur laquelle je devais plonger n’était pas disponible en novembre, leur saison est terminée et de plus c’est un $600 de fuel allé et retour. Nous avons donc décidé de faire de Lafayette notre destination la plus a l’ouest de notre roadtrip.

Notre premier arrêt en Louisiane était la Nouvelle Orléans, nous étions stationnés sur le bord du canal du lac ponchartrain sur le mauvais bord de la digue. Il y avait un service de navette qui t’amène dans le quartier Français le matin et te ramasse le soir. En plus dans le parc il y avait un concours de BBQ avec juges etc..

 

Je vais en ville de jour, je ne tiens pas particulièrement au Night Life Urbain. A pied le meilleur moyen de visiter le coin. J’ai visité les endroits que je n’avais pas vu et voulait photographier, Mardi Gras World entre autre et le cimetière Saint Louis était dans ma ligne de mire. J’ai su plus tard que c’était un endroit dangereux pour les photographes, beaucoup de mugging.dans les coins isolé du cimetière.

Destin Fla. Oct. 2013

 

Destin en Floride est une ville de villégiature sur la côte nord du golfe du Mexique.

En novembre la saison touristique est terminée mais la météo est bonne, cette année mon épouse assistait une conférence, donc nous sommes arrêtés pour quelques jours, Le matin je peux prendre de grandes marches avec le chien, cette année il y avait un avertissement pour une maman ourse et 2 bébés, on ne l’a pas rencontré.

The trip (first leg)

So on the thursday after work, I got home attached the fifth wheel to the truck and we took off. Passing the border was our easiest ever, no traffic and no inspection as we usually have to go trough. This being our first real road trip with this new combination of truck and trailer I'm kind of curious to cross the Adirondack Park, it goes very well the truck pulls the load easily over the mountains. That night we make it to Woodstock home of the famous 1969 concert.

The next day we drove down to Natural Bridge in Virginia, called like this because of a natural arch first surveyed in the 18th century by none other then George Washington. We have been there before and spent the time to visit the surroundings. This time we were on the road with a deadline, we had to be in Destin, Florida on the monday morning for a conference my wife was attending. So we just stayed the night and hit the road the next morning.

On the saturday we drove down the 81 until it turns into the 40 down in Tennessee, our destination that night was in Chattanooga. When we got there the RV park was full, after verification they found a site but it was a tight fit If the fifth wheel would have been a foot more we could not get in. An interesting fact was that the RV park was on the site of a civil war battle.

On the sunday morning we took the 59 across Alabama until we reached Montgomery, then we took small roads south all the way to Destin, thanks to the time zone change that day we arrived at destination around 5h00 pm.

Patriot Point

As usual we decided not to drive directly to Montreal but to do at least one top on the way. Sebastien had never been to Charleston so we did a small detour and got a room in a Hotel at Patriot Point home of the Yorktown Carrier. We have half a day to spend there, not more because the plan is to sleep in Petersburg that night. So at 9h00 at opening time we are at the gate, still we can't see everything the carrier alone take most of a day if you want to see all of it. There is a Vietnam forward naval base and a WW2 Submarine to visit. There is also a new exhibit, a WW2 destroyer that I never saw.

So we decided to visit the Destroyer first since I had never visited it and then visited 85% of the Carrier before noon. It is quite impressive to visit exception made for the few planes on deck that are more modern it's like tang a trip in time to 1945 during the war in the pacific.
The scale of it is dwarfing, the pictures of the time illustrate well that wars are fought by young men in their twenties. When we visit the insides of the ship it gives us a good feel for what the life onboard would have been like.

Aft a brief visit of the gift shop we were on the road at 12h30 and that night we slept at our projected destination. The next day we drove back to Montreal and arrived home arround 21h00.
I am done traveling for a while so I wont be posting much until the fall.
In the meantime don't hesitate to visit my website www.bigphotodan.ca . I just finished getting all of the pictures in my computer, over 4000 of them and I will be updating my site as I work with them.

Blue Grotto

Today we are diving at the blue grotto another cavern located about a mile from our cabin, we get there and the outside part of the site is not as nice as the other place and Mr.Grumpy is in charge of the place, The briefing is a very nicely made video with emphasis on not touching the bottom. This cavern is deeper it goes down a chimney to a depth of over one hundred feet, to deep for the certification level of Sebastien and frankly to much for my comfort level. So we will stay in the first part that is delimitated by a line at 60 feet, actually on both dives there we did not exceed 55 feet. There is a nice turtle swimming at the surface.

The entry from a floating dock is easy and as soon as we go down spectacular. Once again there are some underwater platforms for gathering and our mandatory 3 minutes safety stop at 15 feet. The cavern is vast and with no pass-trough. There is even a diving bell feed with compressed air that I find cool but Sebastien does not like it. So we swim around taking pictures.

At the end of the last dive as we are waiting on the platform during our safety stop there is a lot of small fishes that are so close that we could touch them. Also as we exit there is one big catfish near the platform. It was a very nice dive indeed, now we pack up our dive gear for a long time and start our drive to the north.

We had great dives on this vacation a total of 14 and a lot of fun. We bring back memories an a few thousand pictures as well as some videos.

Devil's Den

After the manatees snorkeling we drove 45 miles to the cabin I had reserved at the Devil's Den a popular site for diving in a cavern environment with a depth profile not exceeding 52 feet and with most of the cavern allowing to ascend easily to the surface.
The cabin is perfect for our needs with 2 beds one on the main floor and the other one on the mezzanine. It's got a kitchen with stove and fridge and an outdoor grill for charcoal BBQ, there is a big covered porch perfect for hanging our gear to dry after diving. No internet in the cabin but we have access to a slow one at the dive shop. So we went and did a basic grocery so we can eat most of our meals at the cabin. There is a couple of divers in the cabin next to ours and they are very nice.

There is no fixed time to dive the cavern, we are allowed togo in any time between 9h00 and 17h00 so we have breakfast, do a morning dive, have lunch at the cabin and then do an afternoon dive. They fill up our tanks during the surface interval. We have to put all our gear on except fins and mask at the surface and then enter the cavern going down at least 50 steps and trough an entrance carved in the stone. At the bottom of the stairs there is a platform with stairs that goes down in the water where we can do our final set up. Under the water there is 2 or 3 more platforms, the first one at around 10 feet perfect for assembly of the team and buoyancy adjustment. There is a platform at 17 feet perfect to do our 3 minutes safety stop on the ascent.

So we start our first dive and first circle the cavern to get a better understanding of it's submerged configuration, we look for fossils that are present in that cavern but we can't find any, probably because of our lack of knowledge on what we are looking for. We go trough some passthrough but only the bigger ones because with the camera and flashes it's a bit awkward. So we end up this dive a bit before our air is all used up because Sebastien's is cold and the water being at 69f and he's wearing is shorty, it is understandable. We will go for lunch and he will wear his full wetsuit for the afternoon dive, also I wont bring the camera so that we can explore more of the narrow tunnel passages.

On our afternoon dive as we are getting ready a lone diver ask us if he can buddy with us, we agree and we are 3 to dive. We know that in the cavern there are some dead end tunnels that can be dangerous to dive trough, it was explained in the briefing, the good thing is that they are clearly marked, also before entering a tunnel we close our lights and make sure that there is daylight at the end of it. We go trough some pretty long and narrow ones, the longest I go trough is about 40 feet long and I have to rotate in order to squeeze out of the exit. By the time we surface we both agree that we had enough of cavern penetration and that would not be a diving specialty that we will take.

Tomorrow we go diving another cavern about a mile from here, but that will be another posting.

Crystal River

Again this year we decided to go and snorkel with the manatees in Crystal River, so we left West Palm Beach at 6h00 and drove about 250 miles North-West across Florida and got there around 10h30. We checked in with the operator and went for lunch, we had to be back at 12h00 for the briefing. As the balance between the ecologist movement who would like to stop this activity and the operators and the locals who benefit from the influx of money brought in by the tourists the rules changes, the activity is monitored by government officials onboard kayaks and fines can be given if the rules are not followed. So the operators and everybody that would like this activity to continue abide with the rules. This year one of the change was that we were not permitted to wear our fins the argument being that it made it easy for some people to chase the manatees, the other change was that we are no longer permitted to do flash photography as it disturbs he manatees. Both changes were fine with me, the no fins gave me a good swimming workout especially going upstream in the little river to get to the source of the spring and the no flash is not that much a big deal and it made it easier to swim without them.

The delimitation of the sanctuary were much bigger then last year and there were fewer manatees because of all the warm weather during the past weeks, when it is warmer they tend to stay in the Gulf of Mexico. So at first it was a bit disappointing since we swam the perimeter and only saw one manatee in murky waters, we then decided to swim up river to he source of the spring and there the water was crystal clear and there were 4 or 5 manatees in there. At first there was a bunch of morons lifting all the sediments from the bottom and destroying the visibility so we moved to the other end of the spring where there was fewer people and started taking pictures. The spring sources are around 30 feet deep in crystal blue water and there was a manatee on the ledge about halfway down waiting for me and my camera.

After the bunch of morons had left we returned to the other spring source to look for more and we found two I think it was a mother and baby, although it could also have been a couple. Anyway here it was another opportunity for pictures. We spent around an hour and a half in the water and then got back to the boat 10 minutes before the time limit. By then everybody else was back on the boat, out of their wetsuits and waiting for us.

When we got back on deck, we packed up and drove the 45 miles to the cabin we rented at the Devil' Den in Williston Florida, but that will be part of my next posting.

Sombrero Reef in Marathon, Fla

Today we are doing our last ocean dive with Tilden dive center, the outfit in Marathon where I got certified. I want to return to Sombrero Reef where I took my first dives, it was so beautiful that I had promised to return, the first time I was in the process of passing my certification so I had lots of exercises to concentrate on so I ws not allowed to bring a camera either and on top of it I was afflicted with Seasickness so severe that I could barely dive. So it will be nice to return in a more relaxed setting and enjoy the scenery. Just in case I took two dramamine pills and had a very light lunch, half a salad without the chicken and very little vinaigrette while Sebastien is devouring a Baconator Burger in front of me. At the dive shop they tell us that the seas are 3 to 5 feet so I brace for the worst.

We get our gear on the boat the "Leisure Lee" and I quickly proceed to get my bcd and regulators hooked to the tank while we are attached to the docks and waiting for the two other divers diving with us today to arrive. By the time we get on our way I'm all setup so I can concentrate on relaxing. The two other divers have dove at Sombrero Reef the day before so we are going to make the first dive at another location called Lobster Hole and the second one at Sombrero Reef.

We get to the first dive site and I'm ready to dive first and since I'm also the closest to the platform and that the dive-master knows that I'm prone to seasickness and would like to spend as little time on the boat as possible, more especially when we are at the dive site with the motors off bouncing around at the pleasure of the waves, they get me in the water right away so I can hang on the tag line trailing at the back of the boat while waiting for Sebastien to join me. He does and we dive down together.

The diving spot is nice but there is a strong current that keeps me deviating from my compass heading, also the visibility is not that great 25 feet at he most and the water greenish. Nevertheless we make the most of it and I even find nice Hogfish to photograph. With the current the swim to the boat is confusing and difficult, I have to surface 4 times to get a visual on the boat. The sea is rough enough that we have to take our fin off while hanging to the tagline because we need both our hands to hold to the steps as they move in every directions including up and down while we are climbing aboard. I got to my seat, untied myself from my gear, leaned over the side of the boat and fed the fishes.

We consume more air then the other divers team so we have to sit on the boat until they come back and get onboard, the Captain then takes us to he secondary location for us to do our second dive, in the meanwhile we have to remove all our gear from the empty tank and put it on a full one. I'm so sick, still vomiting over the side that I cant't deal with the tank change so I asked the dive-master and he did it for me. I managed to stop vomiting before we got to the second site so when we got there I geared up and dove in. I decided not to bring my camera on this dive and to concentrate on the dive, Sebastien is taking some pictures anyways and I don't need the extra burden of my big camera.

So he meets me on the tag line and we dive down on that wonderful site of perfectly clear blue-waters with amazing visibility. The sea life is diverse and plentiful, with nothing to do but appreciate my surroundings and concentrating on my diving it is a perfect dive, well until about 30 minutes into the dive that is. I start feeling queazy so I signal Sebastien "something wrong + stomach" he asks me if I want to surface. I think about the last time on that exact same spot when it happened to me and I surfaced and barfed everywhere and that my instructor had told me afterwards that it was possible to do it trough he regulator. So I signal Sebastien "no to surface, ok to stay here" and according to him thats when I became surrounded by a cloud of chunks and particles, I grabbed my secondary regulator to breathe from while I cleaned my primary and we were able to continue the dive until we finished our tanks. We got back on board and I lied down on the big mattress in the middle until the other divers got back on board. Even if I'm sick every time I go to this place,I still want to return, it is so beautiful the nicest site I ever been to.

Diving in the Keys

So here we are in the keys more precisely in Key Largo we decided to come here to do some ocean diving on the reefs. We got here on Tuesday morning and we managed to get access to the hotel before the diving so we got setup and then proceeded to go to John Pennekamp to register for the afternoon dive, unfortunately they were going to the Spiegel Grove, a dive to deep for Sebastien my buddy who is not certified advanced open water. We went with Ocean Divers instead, it was a big boat we were 24 divers on board. We went to molasses reef where we dove 2 sites, the aquarium and the winch hole.

On the first dive I had problems with my mask leaking but the site was wonderful, a big sand bowl filled with fishes. It was a nice 25 feet profile but I forgot to turn on my flashes so my pictures are on the blue side, my navigation to get back to the boat was pretty accurate, enough to lower Sebastien's anxiety about being lost at sea far from the boat.

On the boat during the surface interval there was a lady that was starting to be seasick, it was her first time on a dive boat and she was snorkeling, felling myself a bit queasy I could relate very well to her predicament so I offered her some ginger to chew on and lavender essential oil to put behind her ears and offered her some tips on avoiding feeding the fishes. After a while we got back in the water for our second dive, I had fiddled with my mask while onboard and now it was leak free. This dive however presented Seb with a greater difficulty since the bottom was deeper then the capability of the camera so he needed perfect control of his buoyancy in order not to exceed 33 feet he did great with his maximum depth at 34 feet during that dive. I had also fixed my flash problem but in the middle of that dive I ran out of space on my memory card. That swim back to the boat was also dependent on navigation and I was pretty happy with the result.

Yesterday unfortunately when we went to the dive shop we learned that the waves were 4 to 6 feet high, making it impossible for me not to puke my guts out and very dangerous for both of us to handle the ladder on boat reentry so we did other activities instead. Today we are doing an afternoon dive from Marathon to Sombrero Reef.

Skorkel at Peanut Island

I took some friends of my mom snorkeling at Peanut Island today, although they come here to spend their winter every year they did not know of the place existed.
It's a very nice place, first it's an island that can only be accessed by water, in our case since none of us owns a boat we used a water taxi, it's only $10 per person and they even come back to pick you up. I took them to force-e my favorite dive shop in that sector to get fitted with rental gear; wet suit, mask, fins, snorkel for $35 per person.

Being subjected to the tide, we got in the water around 15h00 and snorkeled for an hour and a half. It was warm enough but with cloudy passages and when we got out it was raining but they have some gazebo we were able to get under to get dry and put our gear away. All in all we had a good time and now they know a good spot to go snorkeling when they have friends and family coming down south to visit.

A week of diving at the Blue Heron Bridge.

Funny enough this week the Bridge was voted #1 diving location in the US for photography by a big diving magazine. For us it is an ideal location, just a short drive way and with the dive shop just beside it where we can rent those big 100cf tanks for just 15 bucks, park the pickup with the tailgate as a nice place to get ready and walk 100 feet on the beach to get in the water. Also did I mentioned free parking and an outside shower to rinse all your gear.
The dive time is set by the tide, we can dive 1 hour before until 1 hour after the high tide giving us a 2 hours dive window. That time changes everyday advancing by 45 minutes, this week being the best times in the month, Monday the high tide was at 10h00 and tomorrow Saturday it will be at 14h00.

This week we managed to go diving 3 times so far, one day I couldn't because I was to congested with the cold and another day because again my sinus were blocked and I had a sore ear, also Sebastien my son and diving buddy had a sore back. Today Friday we decided to take a day off from diving so I could try to rest and get rid of my cold and for him to get his back better.

The main goal of our dives at the bridge are Photography and practice, so we both are taking pictures, Sebastien with my small point and shoot Canon D10 and me with my Sony Nex-5N in a 10 Bar housing with 2 Sea & Sea strobes. It's taking me some time to get used to my new camera system and using flashes a new thing for me, so much so that on the first dive Sebastien's pictures are better then mine, as the week progressed I got better and got some great shots. We also took some videos during the dives some of them we posted on facebook and some on my Youtube channel that can be found easy either by searching for bigphotodan on Youtube or by following he link on my website under the contact tab.

Of course we had a few adventures as always the case, one of the things that happened is that on monday at the end of the dive as we were almost on shore our dive flag that is installed on a small raft became untied and started floating away, pretty fast because there was strong wind and current, lucky for us I noticed before it disappeared from our visibility range and darted after it swimming as fast as possible it took me at least ten swim cycle before I could grab the end of the rope and drag it back to shore. You see the raft has a small compartment in it where we store the car keys while we dive so it was quite essential to retrieve it. I have since this incident made modifications to the attachment of the cable to the raft and let me assure you it will not happen again.

The reason diving at the bridge is well known in the diving community is the diversity of small sealife to photograph and we saw some interesting ones indeed. There was for instance this big Hermit Crab that live in a Conch Shell the size of a football, I noticed it and started taking pictures after a few shoots the current had carried me past it so I decided to swim a circle in order to get back to a better position, when I got back in position the water had gone cloudy with a lot of matter in suspension so I was not to happy with myself assuming that I had not been careful with my fins and had lifted all that matter from the bottom, but after observing the Crab it became evident that he was the one creating the dust storm on purpose in an effort to better camouflage itself. Sebastien even got it on video, I managed to take some of my best photos so far using my new system.

We've been seeing those big spider like crabs, after some research I learned that they are known as Yellow Stripes Arrow Crabs so on our last dive I spotted one that was in a good position and was able to observe it for a while, during that time I took some good pictures and also a video.
We plan to go back diving at the bridge tomorrow Saturday and maybe on Sunday.

Next week the tide times are not as good so we plan to go diving in the Keys for a few days.